


Epilogue

by lifeisrandom34



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Resolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 08:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeisrandom34/pseuds/lifeisrandom34
Summary: A soft ending for adventurers who have been through enough





	Epilogue

The night following the not-quite-end of the world was quiet. Or, at least, quieter than Magnus expected. He could hear the distant sounds of celebration—cheering, singing, sporadic explosions of multi-colored light, both magic and a mixture of combustible powders Lucas called “fireworks.” Lucas was sitting on top of Upsy lighting them off with matches, or so Carey and Killian had reported between checking to make sure Magnus, Merle, and Taako were still alive and rushing off to join the festivities. 

But Magnus didn’t feel like joining the party. Not yet, anyway. He had been chasing The Hunger for over a hundred years, even when he wasn’t aware that’s what he was doing. His body would have a hard time forgetting the deeply-ingrained vigilance. It would be a long time before he believed that the fight was really over, that there was no one left to protect. 

In any case, he was content to sit quietly and watch the others enjoy themselves. He collected some debris, limbs downed and half-charred during the battle, and built a fire in the shadow of the StarBlaster. It felt almost like old times, even if the window to the past was warped.

Taako, Lup, and Barry sat within the circle of firelight, trading stories while the others looked on, amused and relieved. Taako had latched himself to his sister’s spectral side the moment she reappeared. Magnus imagined that’s where he would stay for the foreseeable future. He marveled at how similar they were, even after all the time and the separation. He watched, amused when their faces lit up in the exact same way as they described how they had cast exactly the right spell at exactly the right moment and turned the tide of the battle in their favor. For once, neither of them was exaggerating. Barry’s eyes caught Magnus’ for a moment over the campfire and they shared a grin. Their twins were home, where—Istus Willing—they would stay. 

At some point, Davenport—finally awake again and too full of adrenaline to sit still—set off in the direction of the revelries. He wanted to take stock of the damage on the ground, he said, though the twinkle in his eye suggested he might seek out Avi and his ever-present flask instead. Merle left with him, shuffling his feet for a moment first.

“I just…people might be hurt or something. And I know I’m not good at it or whatever, but…” he ran his thumb down the worn spine of his “Xtreme Teen Bible.” “Well, I figure I oughta go do my thing.”

Magnus clapped a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “Absolutely. Do what you need to do. We’ll keep the fire going until you get back.”

Davenport and Merle set off toward the fireworks and Lucretia quietly joined Magnus by the fire, a singed and sheepish Angus McDonald in tow.

“I didn’t want him out here alone,” she whispered to Magnus during a particularly boisterous moment of Taako and Lup’s joint storytelling. 

“Of course!” Magnus slung and arm around Angus’ shoulder. “Ango’s always welcome.”

The young boy’s smile told Magnus he was almost starting to believe that. 

Eventually, the conversation dwindled and Taako and Lup set off to find others to entertain with their harrowing, heroic tales, dragging Barry with them. Angus nodded off against Magnus’ arm. He awoke with an embarrassed start, shoving his glasses back up his nose and stammering that he was “awfully sorry, but I am quite sleepy, sir.”

Lucretia led Angus by the hand into the StarBlaster and set him up in a bunk for the night, no doubt promising to station herself outside the ship all night if she had to, so nothing happened to him. Even if she hadn’t said as much out loud, her resolve was evident in the set of her shoulders when she rejoined Magnus by the fire. She positioned herself between the door to the StarBlaster and the outside world, tension etched into the too-deep lines around her eyes. 

She noticed Magnus studying her posture and laughed. But she didn’t move. 

“He’s so young,” she said as way of explanation. 

Magnus knew what she meant. “It’s hard to imagine that we were all that young once.”

This was especially true now, as Magnus surveyed Lucretia’s face in the firelight. The tension had yet to drain out of her features, which were already unduly austere, thanks to the time Wonderland had stolen from her. But, there was more to it than that. Magnus had a hard time reconciling the shy girl who had boarded the StarBlaster with her crate full of notebooks and her ink-stained fingertips with the woman who sat next to him today. She had been younger than him, then. Still technically was, for whatever that meant in lives as unstuck in time as theirs had been. But, even with his memories intact again, when Magus looked at Lucretia, he saw The Director. 

“Yes, well,” Lucretia’s mouth twitched infinitesimally. “Age is just a number. Isn’t that what they say?”

Magnus’ laughter surprised even him. “You got that right.” He shook his head. “I forgot you used to be funny.”

He’d meant the comment to be playful, but the slight smile slipped off Lucretia’s face and she sighed. “I used to be a lot of things.”

She turned away from the firelight, but Magnus could guess that her face had drawn together in a tight-lipped frown. Furthermore, he could guess what she was thinking. 

“Lucretia,” words weren’t necessarily Magnus’ strong suit. He wasn’t like Taako, always ready with a clever quip or a blistering comeback. But, he could sense Lucretia’s pain. So, he did what he always did when someone around him was in trouble: he rushed in. Conversationally. “You know they’ll all forgive you eventually, right?”

She shook her head, but didn’t turn back to face him. 

Magnus frowned. This was usually the point in serious conversations when Magnus passed the buck to Merle for further comforting (not to Taako though. That’s a mistake you only make once.) But, he couldn’t just leave her here by herself, staring dejectedly toward the sound of a distant party.

Could he? No. No, he couldn’t do that. Magnus summoned his inner cleric, such as it was, and inched closer to Lucretia’s tense form.  
“I…I’m not any good at this. But, you saved the world today. All the worlds, really. We’ve been wandering the universe for a century and today we put The Hunger down for good. We couldn’t have done that without you. That’s not nothing.”

Lucretia scoffed. “It was the least I could do; let’s not pretend we don’t both know that.”

“Well, I mean, obviously today didn’t get off to a great start, but—”

“You pointed a sword at me, Magnus. A flaming, raging, poisoning sword _of doom.”_

__

__

Oh, right. That.

“Okay, sure, I did do that. But, you have to understand, a lot was going on. A lot to process, you know? But, no one would have done anything serious.”

“You don’t think Taako would have killed me if he’d had the chance?” Lucretia shifted, the force of her incredulity drawing her back toward Magnus, eyebrows raised and dark eyes catching firelight.

Of course, a frank discussion of her close brush with death would be what brought her back to life. Magnus would have shaken his head at her if she hadn’t been right. Taako would have killed her without a second thought, no questions asked. Taako was a wink and a vague suggestion away from murder on a good day, but the blank expression on his face when he remembered what Lucretia had taken from him for almost a decade was stark and merciless. He would have tried to kill her if Lup hadn’t intervened. There was no doubt in Magnus’ mind. The only question was whether or not Lucretia would have fought back. 

“Would you have let him?” Magnus asked.

Lucretia’s eyebrows drew together again, in confusion this time. “I…no? Why would—no.”

“Well, there you go, then.” Magnus leaned back against the stump he was using as a chair, satisfied. 

“There I go, what? What are you talking about?”

“If you didn’t believe in your plan, if you really thought you’d done the wrong thing, you would have let us stop you.” 

Lucretia still frowned. “I don’t follow.”

Magnus sighed. “Look, all I’m saying is that none of us are necessarily surprised that you tried to take on the relics and the Hunger alone. We may not have liked your methods—like…really not liked them—but you’ve never needed the rest of us for pretty much anything. Why wouldn’t you want to get us out of the way so you could work?”

The change in Lucretia’s features was startling. Her eyes grew wide and she jerked backward, as if Magnus had burned her. Magnus froze. How had he managed to fuck this up? What had he said? He knew he should have let Merle handle this. Or just left well enough alone. Lucretia looked like she was about to shatter. 

“Is that what you think?” Her voice was as fragile as Magnus had heard it in a hundred years. “That I don’t need any of you? That I think you’re all in my way on my path to greatness?”

“Well, now, come on. You did feed our memories to Fisher and scatter us around the planet. It sure didn’t look like you wanted us on your team. I mean, until you brought us back onto your team, I guess.”

Lucretia dropped her head into her hands. “This is what I was afraid of.”

Magnus had never been so out of his depth. He wasn’t a nuanced person. All he wanted to do was make the pain go away. But, it seemed to him that Lucretia had backed herself into a corner. She believed in herself and hated herself simultaneously. And while Magnus knew that feeling—he really, really did—he had never known how to resolve it. How many nights had be lain awake, replaying the last months of Raven’s Roost in his head, imagining what could have been if he hadn’t lead the revolt against Governor Kalen, if he hadn’t left that fateful day, or—in his more selfish moments—if he had at least insisted that Julia leave town with him? 

Merle constantly preached the value of letting go—”No Regrets” was his refrain. But, Magnus had never known how. Taako had explained to Magnus what happened in Wonderland, that the Liches who had briefly stolen and destroyed his body had also erased his memory of Governor Kalen. And perhaps that was true, but the pain of Kalen’s crimes—and the guilt Magnus carried still—would have lived on in Magnus’ core whether he had been able to articulate the reason for it or not. He was a protector, right down to his marrow. It had never occurred to him that Lucretia might want to be a protector, too. 

“I did not feed your memories to the Void Fish because I wanted to get rid of you. Any of you,” Lucretia heaved in a deep, unsteady breath. “I confess I thought I was strong enough to reclaim the relics on my own, and I wanted the rest of you to be safe in the meantime. But, I discovered my mistake quickly. I was nothing without the team. Nothing substantial, anyway. I floundered for years. Even when I did make some headway,” her gaze followed the glittering path of Lucas’ fireworks across the sky. “I was so lonely and miserable that I couldn’t accept help. If I hadn’t found Lucas, I never would have gotten the Bureau of Balance off the ground, literally or figuratively. And my only response was to shove him away as soon as he started asking questions. And, of course, you can see what happened when I tried to reclaim a relic by myself.” She gestured vaguely at her general appearance. “Hubris disguised as benevolence. That is my only legacy.”

“Now hold on a minute,” Magnus leaned toward Lucretia, snagging her gaze and refusing to let it go. “First of all, literally everyone on this plane knows your back story, so it’s safe to say your ‘legacy’ is a little more complex than that. Second of all, not only are you _not_ the only person on this planet to try to tame the relics on your own—like…almost everyone has—but you’re not even the only member of our team to do it. Lup tried so hard to keep the Phoenix Fire gauntlet out of civilian hands that she got herself sucked up by an umbrella, which is not a sentence I thought I’d ever say. But, seriously, we’ve all done dumb stuff. Taako, Merle, and I blew up a town. We almost murdered some worm babies. Mere tried to fuck a plant. It was horrifying. Some forgiveness is gonna be in order all around. But, if you’re going to sit here and tell me everything that’s happened in the last ten years has been a mistake, I’m gonna have some problems with that.”

Lucretia’s expression softened as Magnus spoke. “Your wife.”

“She was the best part of all the planes. The best part of all the lives I’ve lead or ever will lead. So, if you’re asking me to regret any series of events or twist of fate that brought me to her, you can go peddle your self-pity somewhere else.”

Lucretia flinched slightly, the smallest twitch of her right eyebrow giving her away. She looked back at the ground. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, an old nervous habit. Magnus tensed. He’d been through a lot of bombshells in the past 24 hours; he wasn’t sure he could handle another. 

“You know, it was easy to find a place in this world for you,” she began. “I heard that Raven’s Roost was the place to be if you wanted to learn woodworking. Since you’d been doing that at the Conservatory, even if you couldn’t remember it, I figured it would be ingrained in your muscle memory. So, I went to Raven’s Roost to see if it lived up to the hype. I met this woman at the base. She was cutting down trees, filling up a wheelbarrow with lumber, though I have no idea how she planned to get it all the way back up the pillar. She was… she was so beautiful and so friendly. When I told her I had a friend who was new to the area and interested in carpentry, she pointed up at the Pillar above us and said, ‘My father owns the most prestigious woodworking shop this side of anywhere. Maybe if your friend is very lucky, my father will award him an apprenticeship. In the meantime, I can rent him a nice room with a studio space and all the lumber he can help me carry up this stupid cliff.’ And, well, you remember the rest.” 

Magnus was momentarily overwhelmed by memories of scenes similar to the one Lucretia had just described. Of making the long journey down the cliff in a technically-functional elevator with Julia. Of competing to see who could fell the most trees in the least time. At first, Magnus assumed he would have to let her win to be polite. He recalled his surprise when she matched him swing for swing. 

“What happened?” she would tease, pointing to their similarly-filled wheelbarrows. “I thought you were supposed to be strong?”

She captivated him so much, even in memory, that he nearly didn’t notice when Lucretia resumed her story. 

“I kept tabs on all of you, of course. Some more closely than others. Mostly I searched for Barry and Lup and tried to make sure Merle and Taako didn’t start any cults, which was a complete failure on almost all fronts. But somehow, it never occurred to me to check in on you. Somehow I assumed you would always come out on top. My own bias, perhaps. Or maybe it would have been too painful to see you. I’ve never been sure.

“Regardless, it did look like I was right. Even when word reached me of the conflict in Raven’s Roost, all the stories were about the brave carpenter who brought everyone together and drove out a despot. I didn’t have to ask whether or not the brave carpenter was you. It seemed that despite my clumsiness, I had managed to put you down right where you belonged.” She laughed bitterly. “Maybe that’s why I reacted the way I did when I found out the Craftsmen’s Corridor had been destroyed.”

Magnus bolted upright. He hadn’t known Lucretia _had_ reacted when the Craftsmen’s Corridor had been destroyed. “What do you mean?”

Lucretia sighed. “I had just watched a slew of potential Reclaimers succumb to the power of the Gaia Sash and had a fairly significant falling out with Lucas. I was…” she paused, choosing her words carefully. “Distraught. And then I got word that the Craftsmen’s Corridor of Raven’s Roost had been burned to the ground and the leaders of the uprising had been killed. I…Magnus, I have never known such…fury, before or since. The thought of having lost you, after everything I had done to keep you safe, it consumed me.” Her hands began to shake and she twisted them together in her lap. “The land was almost unrecognizable by the time I got there. Kalen burned the forest surrounding the Pillars down. They were naked and smoldering and I remember thinking that that was appropriate, somehow. That there shouldn’t be anything left there if you were gone.”

Magnus remembered the desolation when he returned to Raven’s Roost. The fire at the base of the Craftmen’s Corridor had barely been contained by the few Raven’s Roost residents who remained. He must have been leaving right as Lucretia arrived. They had just missed each other, though Magnus would never have noticed her. Not then. 

“He was hiding out at the base of one of the other pillars. His friends, such as they were, attempted to disguise their encampment, but it was a weak effort. They weren’t difficult to find if you know how to look for transfiguration magic. His posse was almost laughably easy to dispatch.”

Magnus’ stomach twisted, a flurry of emotion rising up inside of him. He didn’t know that Kalen was still at Raven’s Roost when Magnus returned to survey the damage. All these years of searching and he’d been right there. If Magnus had known that, if Kalen had been there when Magnus found out what had become of Julia and everyone else he had ever loved…the idea alone sent adrenaline coursing through his veins. He had been so close. 

But, then, what would he have been able to do? Magnus had driven Kalen out with the full-throated support of every able-bodied citizen of Raven’s Roost he’d been able to muster. They had won, then, but barely. If Julia and the others had lost the fight when Kalen returned, with whatever new magic and minions he had recruited along the way, Magnus wouldn’t have stood a chance. Realistically, it wouldn’t have mattered if Magnus had been in town when Kalen attacked. He would be dead like the others. That was the bitter pill he’d been swallowing for years now. What good was an axe against magic like Kalen’s?

Of course, if anyone was up to the task of defeating him, Lucretia was. Magnus turned the phrase “laughably easy” over in his mind. He knew Lucretia was powerful. He’d watched her save the world today, after all. But he had never thought to compare her to Kalen. Kalen loomed in his mind as an almost mythical figure; Magnus’ imagination refused to accept anything else. If Lucretia had bested his bodyguards with ease, then it was a good thing indeed that Taako had not followed through on his attempts to kill her. She would have reduced him to so much magical residue. 

And yet, she sat primly across from him now, eyes gentle and brow creased. When she spoke again, her voice was softer than before.

“I didn’t kill him,” she said, and Magnus frowned. Why was she telling this story then? “I didn’t kill him and I don’t regret it. When I got into his tent, Kalen was crouched on the dirty floor, staring at nothing. Whatever power he used to destroy Raven’s Roost had destroyed his mind as well. He knew he wasn’t powerful enough to overcome you and your friends alone, so he dabbled in power he couldn’t control. I wasn’t consciously aware of the fact that I had gone to Raven’s Roost to avenge your death, or, your supposed death, until I saw him there at my feet, utterly helpless. And as soon as I realized that, the fire went out. The man before me was a shell of whatever he had once been. He couldn’t have fought me. He didn’t even realize I was there.” Lucretia leaned forward and, to Magnus’ surprise, took one of his hands in hers, smoothing out the fingers he didn’t realize he had clenched. “Ultimately, the madness was too much for him. The madness or the guilt, I suppose. He took his own life the next day. I didn’t stay to see whether they buried him at the base of Raven’s Roost or not. I considered feeding his memory to the Void Fish, but that seemed a bridge too far. His memory belonged to this world and this world alone. And I couldn’t bear to take away anyone else’s memory of you.”

A thought resurfaced then, still cloudy and dark around the edges in Magnus’ mind. An image of Lucretia’s face, young and frantic. Standing on-board the StarBlaster next to a fish tank full of journals with tears streaming down her cheeks. “I love you, Magnus,” she had said, doing her best to ease his fall to the floor as his consciousness drained away. “I’m sorry. It’ll all be over soon.” He wondered if that was true. If she had spent a century pining for him, all those years ago. And if she had, whether or not it mattered now. 

Ultimately, Magnus decided it didn’t matter. Not really. Lucretia the lonely journal keeper may have loved him. Or, at least, thought she loved him. But Lucretia the Director no longer did. Or, at least, not in the same way. Not in the simple, unabashed way that youth—even their one-time facsimile of youth—convinced you was invincible. Like Magnus, too much had been taken from Lucretia for her to love like that again. The weight of their traumas, both shared and individual, hung in the space between them, a stumbling block they would spend the rest of their lives learning to work around. 

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Magnus blurted. “Erase him, I mean. And kill him, too, I guess.”

The last part might have been a lie. The news that Kalen was gone, had been gone this whole time, was welcome. He couldn’t hurt anyone ever again. But part of Magnus, maybe even most of Magnus, couldn’t help but feel a selfish pang of regret that his blade hadn’t drawn out Kalen’s last breath, that Magnus’ face wasn’t the last face Kalen ever saw. For a time, before he re-met Taako and Merle, revenge had been Magnus’ only driving force, the only future plan that mattered. 

But, then, that was grief. What Magnus had lost could never be replaced, not if he lived a hundred more years, or a thousand more years. What could ever rival the peal of Julia’s laughter or the serenity of Steven’s workshop on a sunny morning? What could replace the promise of a peaceful future that Magnus had fought time and space and the universe itself to earn?

Lucretia had known the answer all along: nothing. Nothing could replace a life free of violence and heartbreak once the seal had been broken. That’s why she had erased everyone’s memory of the relics and shouldered the burden of the Hunger and the Light and a hundred years of running and dying and watching world after world fall prey to the darkness. She had shouldered that grief for everyone because the End of the World wasn’t the only pain that mattered, as Magnus and the others had originally believed. The quotidian pain of everyday people who lost homes and loved ones and freedom to the thrall of the relics mattered, too. If there was even an outside chance that she could take away that pain and concentrate it in herself, then of course she would. That’s what protectors did. 

“I’m glad, too,” Lucretia’s smile was a shy, small thing. She laced her fingers through Magnus’ and gave his hand a quick squeeze. “I hate to think about what might have happened if I’d made you forget yourself.”

They shared a brief laugh, the weak kind that can only pass between two people who know the topic at hand isn’t really funny, but don’t know what else to do. 

The fire began to burn low and the party in the distance seemed to be dying down. Or relocating, at least. It wouldn’t be long before the others stumbled back to the ship and fell asleep in a pile. Magnus left his and Lucretia’s fingers intertwined, though. He wasn’t quite ready to let this moment go. Not yet. The reality of the day was still soaking in and he needed the feel of another warm body nearby to keep him tethered. 

“Yeah,” Magnus could still see tendrils of smoke left over from the fireworks curling in the wind. He sighed. “I’ll be honest with you, though. If Kalen’s gone, I’m not sure what to do now. Vengeance kind of was my retirement plan.”

Lucretia laughed, for real this time. If not quite on par with the laugh Magnus used to know, it was a welcome sound nonetheless. It was the sound of a new beginning. 

“That is an interesting question, actually,” her smile wasn’t shy anymore. “What will the great Magnus Burnsides do next?”

The last of the firework smoke drifted off into the night sky. He could hear the muffled sound of footsteps and Taako’s lilting voice, still rattling off tall tales, coming in their direction. It was an interesting question. But, at least as far as Magnus was concerned, not a complete mystery.

“Get a dog,” he said. 

Their combined laughter echoed between the trees. Taako, Barry, and Lup crashed drunkenly back into the dwindling circle of firelight, peering around for the source of joviality. Well, Taako and Barry crashed. Lup hovered a few feet behind them, grimacing. 

“She laughs!” Taako crowed when he saw Lucretia wipe the corner of her eyes. He plopped down next to her and slung an arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t know you could do that anymore.”

Lucretia tensed, but didn’t push him off. “Neither did I for a while. I didn’t have much to laugh about.”

Taako narrowed his eyes at her, but the effect was undercut by the intoxicated slouch of his hat down over one eye. “And whose fault is that?”

“My own,” Lucretia used her free arm to prop him up when he began to slide off his perch next to her. “But we can rehash my many faults in the morning, I think.”

Taako nodded slowly, as if she’d said something very wise. Then, bizarrely, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers.

“I love my sister,” he whispered.

“I know,” Lucretia replied. “I never stopped trying to bring her back to you.”

Taako’s reply was too soft for Magnus to hear, but he was willing to bet it wouldn’t have suited Taako from Tv’s “too cool to care” branding, which warmed Magnus’ heart. 

Lup, on the other hand, seemed distinctly less impressed. “Get up, you sloppy bastard. We’re taking you to bed.”

With a bit of manhandling, Barry, Magnus, and (to a lesser extent) Lup were able to wrangle the sleepy Taako into bed, where he promptly collapsed in a pile of languid limbs and bedazzled fabric. Magnus hovered over his sleeping friend for just a moment, knowing that Taako would hate to be fussed over in any way, but still feeling the urge to do _some_ thing, say _some_ thing. 

“We’ll stay with him tonight,” the shadow of Lup’s Lich hand came to rest of Magnus’ shoulder. He looked up to see the crook of a smirk tucked in the corner of her mouth. She’d always hated being the shortest in the group. “You don’t have to worry.”

Magnus couldn’t help but smile in response. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me too.”

Satisfied that Taako was in good hands, even if those hands weren’t his, Magnus ducked out of Taako’s old sleeping quarters and into the silent halls of the StarBlaster. He ran his hands down either wall as he made his way back toward the exit. Magnus could remember marveling over the size of the craft when first saw it. He had known so little about how big the universe really was back then, had had such a slim conception of what was possible. Now, the corridors just seemed small, all flickering reserve lighting and a faint musty odor from so many years sitting stagnant. But, Magnus smiled anyway. Most of the relics from his more innocent past would never come back to him. At least this one had. 

That bittersweet thought carried Magnus out of the StarBlaster and back out in to the open night air. Merle had returned to the campsite while Magnus and the others had helped Taako to bed. He sat next to Lucretia, leaning one hand down on the log next to her. She had placed her hand down on top of his, almost casual enough to be an afterthought, but, Magnus supposed, not quite. The pair didn’t speak. Instead, they sat together in companionable, hard-won silence, with their faces tipped up to the stars. 

It would be months before Magnus learned to still the too-frantic beating of his heart every time he spotted an unfamiliar motion in the corner of his eye. It would be years more before he stopped waking up in a cold sweat from yet another dream of death coming prematurely for his friends. It would have taken lifetimes to break him of his foolhardy habit of rushing in at the first sign of danger. Magnus Burnsides was never meant to be a completely peaceful man. 

But, that night, in the wake of the fight that had defined his existence for over a century, Magnus allowed the tense line of his shoulders to relax. There would be other fights, and he would give those his all. But, tonight, he had saved all he could. He had saved all he could, and he had won. Those he loved had won. This world had won. And as last embers of the fire winked out, and the moon—the real one—drifted out from behind the fading clouds to shine down on the sleeping form of this scarred, beautiful planet Magnus had learned to call his home, he could not think of a better ending than that.


End file.
